We Need Vision, Not Daleyvision

One does not need a time machine to go back into the past. Tuning in the mayor`s race will suffice.

The candidates seem to think they would be supervising a City of Chicago as it existed in the 1950s and 1960s, that parochial, inward-looking domain run by the tight-fisted hand of Richard J. Daley.

They are inflicted with Daleyvision, a narrow, restrictive view of what the city is and what it could be. It is no surprise that, as a key challenger, Daley`s son has inherited those blinders and that neither Tim Evans nor the incumbent mayor, Eugene Sawyer, can seem to bring themselves to imagine the potential for Chicago`s greatness.

The fact is that Chicago is attaining some international muscle and is beginning to attract more foreign capital and investment. With truly visionary leadership, its role as an international city could be advanced dramatically within a few years.

When Mayor Daley ran the ``city that worked,`` it had nothing close to the economic clout it has today. Its base was primarily one of small manufacturing, and it was a blue-collar city with a blue-collar mentality.

In a city where the Boss` machine and ward politics dominated, political issues about petty scandals and corruption excited the population. Many of the private economic decisions were made by the mayor himself.

It was a city that relied on the generosity of the federal purse in Washington. Millions of dollars from Lyndon Johnson`s Great Society programs poured into the city. It was as if the mayor had his hand on a faucet of limitless federal money.

But with hard times in the 1970s and 1980s, those dollars no longer flow with such ease. The recession of 1982, engineered by the Federal Reserve Board with the complicity of the Reagan administration, nearly wrecked the Midwest economy and its reliance on manufacturing.

Freed from the umbilical cord to the mayor`s offices, the regional economy in the 1980s diversified, restructured and developed a more competitive spirit. The cheaper dollar put into effect in 1985 by then-Treasury Secretary James A. Baker did more to revitalize the region than anyone sitting in the mayor`s chair.

The City of Chicago today is more dynamic and international than it was a decade ago. But this has occurred in spite of the city`s political leadership, not because of it. The city`s economy continues to benefit from global integration, even though the city council killed a Japanese loan a few years ago in an outrageous display of xenophobia.

Before his untimely death, Mayor Harold Washington had begun to show signs of understanding the kind of economic leadership required for this day and time. Being mayor today involves more than seeing that the garbage gets collected, the streets get paved and patrolled, and the ``L`` is made safer than it is today.

The reality is that Chicago`s economy could lose its momentum and go backwards. There is little federal money to bail it out. A recession could throw many people now engaged in manufacturing back on the streets. Sears, Roebuck & Co. could abandon the city, a black eye for any metropolis aspiring to greatness.

A mayor with vision would be on his toes in retaining major firms in the city and attracting new ones, including foreign investment. The Japanese, for example, are showing greater interest in this region; their investment should be encouraged, not ignored. Incentives for Sears to remain in the city should have been advanced long ago. A better educational system is an absolute necessity.

Beyond this, the futures markets are the heart of the city`s economic growth. Volume on these exchanges has expanded dramatically in the last decade, yet the city barely understands them and how these exchanges are facing new competition from Tokyo, New York and perhaps other major cities.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade are busy trying to expand their international operations, but since the crash, it`s not clear that they will have the clout to negotiate deals with other governments. The exchanges need some intervention from the politicians, which means a mayor who can converse with government leaders in Washington and other capitals on the importance of these exchanges. This intervention needs to be made in the context of retaining Chicago`s leadership in this vital area.

The same is true of the city`s leadership in other economic areas, such as in transportation and health. Beyond that, there`s a need to think bigger about making this an area where entrepreneurs can truly prosper, as they do in California`s Silicon Valley and even the Washington, D.C., region.

Chicago may never be New York, London, Paris or Tokyo, but it has a chance to become a world-class city if it will only cast the scales off its eyes and grab the vision. This race, though, indicates that the hopeless swamp of city politics will hold it back. It cannot shake off that old malady of Daleyvision.